Autumn to winter

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gideon 'George' Osborne presented his Autumn Statement today, which was more interesting in the background than the content. Growth forecasts have been downgraded from 1.7% this year and 2.5% next year to 0.9% this year and 0.7% next year. The previous forecasts, whilst credible at the time, seemed to err towards optimism and now we are getting the raw, unpleasant facts.

The problem is that the nation's economic strategy relied heavily on growth to reduce the deficit: as has often been mentioned in this blog, there are no cuts as such.

The upshot is to delay Osborne's plans by two years. Barring other disasters - and there may be many - the economy will look to be in good shape by 2017, but there has to be an election by 2015, which will now be fought on the Conservative side in the context of continuing economic pain. Britain is likely to avoid recession - which is defined as two successive quarters of negative growth - but not by much. Against that, it is likely that the Eurozone is already in recession.

On the one hand, Osborne is unlucky: neither he nor anyone else could have predicted the appalling economic mismanagement conducted by Merkel and Sarkozy which, coupled with a heavy dose of incompetence from America and Japan's economic model still failing, has brought much of western capitalism to its knees. Osborne's plans might have worked, now they are subject to ridicule.

On the other hand the Chancellor (isn't it about time we called him the Finance Minister? The whole thing desperately needs a more modern image) - on the other hand he is lucky in his enemies. The British people have accepted the need for belt tightening and do not believe those, such as the felicitously named Mr Balls, who say we could have it easier. If it isn't hurting it isn't working.

I am reminded of H.L.Mencken's dictum: 'Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.'

Osborne's other measures were a raft of Government initiatives, such as more spending on railways, ideologically unsound and leaving the Government open to suggestions that it should have done more of this and earlier. Fortunately, Osborne has very little room for manoeuvre and these are not large enough to cause any lasting damage. Far better would have been to opt out of swathes of legislation coming from Brussels, an earlier rise in the pension age - 2026 is too far away to make much difference - and a reduction in corporation tax. Better than that would have been to identify whole areas of life in Britain in which the government shouldn't be involved at all. At least they are keeping a cap on public sector wages, which is something for the tribunes of the people to think about when they take tomorrow off.

Politically, the thing for Osborne to do now is keep his head below the parapet. I suggest spending more time at Euro-meetings, if his waistline can tolerate it, returning every so often to say we aren't doing quite as badly as them.

The Europe dilemma

It may be said to have started when Mr Cameron came up with the wheeze of allowing petitions with more than 100,000 signatures to be voted on by Parliament; they didn't have to have a vote and if they did it wouldn't be binding on the Government but you could guess some people scented some sort of possible victory.

If Mr Cameron hadn't realised, I think most people could have told him what the first two petitions would be: restoring the death penalty and leaving Europe. Whilst a majority of the people are in favour of both of these, a majority of parliamentarians are against them. They are two areas in which Parliament is out of synch with the people. Parliament decided not to vote on the hanging petition but to have a vote on Europe and that took place last night, the motion being that there should be a referendum on leaving.

For myself, I became certain around 20 years ago that Britain would be better off both financially and democratically if we left the EU. Financially, in part because of the amount we pay into it. Don't be fooled by people who say we should be talking about the net amount we pay in, net of what we get back. Currently the Government would like to apply what we get back towards reducing the deficit but the EU won't allow that. When we talk about income tax we don't say the net figure is zero because we get it back in schools, hospitals etc. The amount we give them is around £12.5 billion a year. The other financial cost is the stifling regulation introduced by the EU over the years, which reduces employment and tax revenues. Most industrialists say we would be better off leaving even the single market.

Democratically, we only have to see that more than 75% of our laws come from Europe, the majority of which we have no veto over.

So I might have been in favour of the motion last night, but my problem would have been that I don't much like referendums. The best thing to be is the guy who writes the question: if it had been 'Should we stay in the EU with all the democratic and financial costs that entails, or leave for a new life of freedom and let the blighters stew in their own juice?' it would have been favourable to my own side. What it would probably be is including a third option of renegotiation, which would catch the slightly undecided.

So a referendum might be lost.

When I blogged on the petitions on 8th August (also on 2nd October) I said 

Neither of these motions has the faintest chance of success and nor have any of the others. The political class is revolted by the idea of the country being run by popular outcry. But I think Cameron may have made a mistake in raising the hopes of the British people only to dash them

The result is that the vote was lost, but more than half Cameron's backbenchers disobeyed his petulant instruction to vote against. Now he has the worst of both worlds. He will try to resolve the situation by promising to renegotiate the terms of our membership, but neither the Conservative Party nor the people will trust him to do so.

His only viable way out is to put to the EU before the next treaty change the things he wants to opt out of, and make that list public. Then when they want to amend the Treaty and need our vote, he can simply refer them to that list.

Has he got the courage and integrity for this? Personally, I don't think so. Let's hope I am wrong.

PS I know there is a movement towards the Government issuing a White Paper on renegotiation, but this is quite wrong. We send the government into these negotiations (which usually come out for more integration) without the detailed approval of Parliament, and this is no different. Also Cameron would say it tied his hands (Nye Bevan's term 'sending them naked into the conference chamber' has already been bandied about). Cameron just needs to get the Tory party onside and call the Liberals' bluff.

Showing the world some fight

In his closing address to the Tory Party Conference the Prime Minister urged us to 'show some fight'. I suppose he was trying to sound Churchillian - most politicians do when they are in trouble.

Most people, however, will be left wondering how they are to fight. Whom are they to fight against?

This blog offers some answers.

Despite the Government agreeing with almost every commentator in the world that public spending should be reduced, it has gone up by £23 billion since Mr Cameron came to office and is scheduled to go up another £20 billion next year. Show some fight, Dave.

Most of the immigrants to Britain are from EU countries, yet despite blethering on about controlling immigration the Prime Minister makes no effort to stop it. Show some fight, Dave.

British industry is choking under levels of regulation its competitors worldwide do not have, in particular the latest ruinously expensive Part-time Workers Directive. Yet Mr Cameron did not refuse to implement it. Show some fight, Dave.

Most of the people who voted for him have been traduced by his undemocratic deal with the Liberal Democrats (the policies were made after we had voted) because he didn't have the balls either to go it alone as the largest party or to call another election. Show some fight, Dave.

Next time the Prime Minister feels like behaving like a man, much less a Churchill, this blog remains at his disposal for advice.

The Tories at play

The Conservative Party Conference begins tomorrow, although there has been so much discussion and leaking in advance that there scarcely seems any point in holding it.

What Conservative supporters and indeed the bulk of its MPs want is a referendum on staying in the EU. Mr Cameron disingenuously said we had already had one (in 1975) but that was of course for remaining in the European Community, which, relatively speaking, was fairly harmless.

However Mr Cameron held out the prospect of discussing it in Parliament, by inviting petitions. I discussed this on 8th August, finishing

'Neither of these motions has the faintest chance of success and nor have any of the others. The political class is revolted by the idea of the country being run by popular outcry. But I think Cameron may have made a mistake in raising the hopes of the British people only to dash them.'

(the other motion was for capital punishment)

It now seems that Mr Cameron's sop to the Eurosceptics in his party is to be in favour of the abolition of the Human Rights Act, which at least would be a short step towards Britain becoming a self-governing democracy. Let's see if he delivers: Cameron seems more and more one of the modern political class, slightly disgusted by the idea of the people running the country.

If I were a betting man, I'd put money on him cheating us out of that, too.

 

 

 

More mindlessness

The Telegraph reports that the Government is to give its consent to a new European Directive which allows agency workers - temps - the same rights and benefits as others.

While one side of the Government (Gideon 'George' Osborne) assures us that there will be measures in favour of jobs and reducing regulation, the other side (John 'Vince' Cable) comes up with this idiocy. In the midst of an awful recession and rising unemployment the Government proposes to increase the costs of employing people. We can almost forgive the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels who came up with this idea, because they don't have to live in the real world. But the elected government of the UK does have to live in the real world and they have completely lost it.

The truth of the matter is that Mr Cameron's unelected and anti-democratic coalition has to say yes to everything European, however mindless, just to keep the likes of Mr Cable on board. The workers and the unemployed can go hang.

Pensions cock-up

There is going to be a mass strike in the UK on Thursday, over pensions. I heard the leader of the teachers' union say that she couldn't even get details of the pension fund.

This seems to have been ineptly handled by the Government, which made one blanket announcement even though each profession has its own scheme. Naturally when workers hear that the terms of their pensions are getting worse, they see it like a paycut.

It isn't quite like that, though. A fund has a duty to pay back what has been put in, but cannot demand that any shortfall be topped up by the employer in the event that it cannot meet its liabilities. The funds cannot meet their liabilities because people are living too long. This has to be explained to the unions separately, with the figures for their fund. Heaven knows it is no secret that the Government hasn't got any money.

It seems to me the Government has been peremptory, high handed. This bodes ill for industial relations in the future.

Tax Freedom Day

The Adam Smith Institute reminds us that today is Tax Freedom Day: from 1st January until 29th May Britons were working for the State, to  pay their taxes. At 149 days this is 3 days longer than last year.

One of the reasons for this is that since the Coalition came to power the State has increased in size by 3%.

It takes a special kind of political incompetence to receive opprobrium for making cuts while in fact raising spending. 

Electoral Systems

Now that the electorate has decisively opted for First Past the Post (FPTP) for Westminster elections, it is time to turn our attention to the hotch-potch of other systems used in Britain.

The Scottish Parliament currently uses the Additional Members System, The Welsh Assembly the Regional Top-up system, London Mayoral elections the Supplementary vote and MEPs the D’Hondt system except N. Ireland which uses the Single Transferable Vote.

Only FPTP has democratic legitimacy and it should be used for all British elections.

UK: The future of the Protest Vote

In a parliamentary election last Thursday in the seat of Barnsley, a former coal mining area in Northern England, the Labour Party candidate, as expected, was returned handsomely. There were two big surprises, however: the UK Independence Party (which campaigns for Britain to leave the EU and which, I had better declare, I helped found) beat the ruling Conservative party candidate into second place; and the Liberal Democrat Party, junior members of the ruling coalition, were beaten into sixth, behind an independent former miner and the far right anti-immigrant British National Party.

Naturally many people are asking whether this is the end for the Liberal Democrats and whilst we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from one result, I think there are points of interest here.

Just twenty or twenty-five years ago there were effectively three parties: you voted Labour or Conservative and if you wanted to register a protest vote you voted Liberal. There were of course others on the ballot paper- the excellent David Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party, for example – but they were cranks. The Liberals were slightly cranky but they had party conferences and party political broadcasts on the television so were a sort of institutionalised protest.

In the 1980s and early 1990s three new national parties emerged: UKIP, the Green Party and the British National Party. They stayed way behind the Liberals (now the Liberal Democrats) but changes to the political broadcast rules meant the smaller parties got more airtime, so the electoral position outside the top two was LibDems (institutional protest), UKIP / Green / BNP (semi-institutional), others. But note that whilst the semi-institutional three had defined core beliefs, the LibDems, to maintain themselves alone in the second division, did not (or at least the notion of 'Liberalism' was sufficiently hazy to adapt to changing circumstances). So only a percentage of LibDem voters voted that way because of what was in their manifesto. It is thought that their core vote is only around 5% of the electorate whereas UKIP, for example has a (total) vote of around 7%.

Now with the LibDems joining the government, their share of the ‘none of the above’ vote may be lost in whole or in part. Of course the core beliefs of the others may hold them back from capturing all these protests: you might be in favour of the EU, anti-environmentalism and pro immigration, but few, I think, share that exotic eclecticism - there is something for everyone.

The LibDem position would seem to be this: if, as we near the next election, the Coalition is seen to have failed, they will reap in full measure what they have sowed. They might well split up into single issue parties, pro-EU for example. If, by contrast, the Coalition is a success, there is the serious risk that Mr Cameron will allow himself to be talked into governing alone (most of his backbenchers don’t like the coalition). In this case the LibDems will find it hard to return to being the principal recipient of the protest vote. They will have been tainted.

Mr Clegg’s best hope is that Mr Cameron still needs him in five years’ time.

Sunday Thinkpiece (2): Mr Cameron's Big Society

During the General Election in the UK last year, Mr Cameron began to talk about The Big Society. It was clear that he thought it was something new and important, but it wasn’t clear, to most people at least, what it was. Some people think that his having laid so much emphasis on it, without really getting the people behind him, was one of the reasons he failed to win an outright majority in Parliament.

Few philosophical ideas have been exported from Britain to the rest of the world and most would bet good money that the Big Society is going to be one of those which isn’t. I think that would be a pity.

One of the reasons Mr Cameron seemed so vague is that he cannot permit himself to enunciate the clearest explanation of it: that at the moment, when something is wrong, people say ‘why don’t they do something about it?’ rather than saying ‘why don’t we do something about it?’ or ‘why don’t I start the ball rolling?’ Mr Cameron’s favourite phrase is almost as famous now as Margaret Thatcher’s oft misquoted original: Cameron says ‘there is such a thing as society, but it’s not the same as the State’.

But even if The Big Society never got going, it has now run into a blaze of negative comment. Here is Polly Toynbee in the Guardian: ‘civil society is rebelling at the great ‘big society’ fraud’. Her reasoning, if I can use such a word with respect to Ms Toynbee, involves the government ‘cuts’. Two examples which have been in the news:

- Liverpool Council, which was to be involved in some Big Society initiative with the Government, has pulled out, citing government cuts.

- Dame Elizabeth Hoodless, the retired head of Community Service Volunteers, said the cuts were destroying volunteering

It’s a bit odd, because one would have thought that volunteering was largely what the Big Society was about.

Let’s look at the local councils. The Government, interested as it is in devolving power, cannot tell the local authorities what to cut and what not to cut, only what their total budget is. They just have to hope that local councils don’t keep the Transsexual Outreach Department and cut children’s schoolbooks. And whilst we don’t yet know for certain, it appears that they are cutting money to charities.

And what is all this, Dame Elizabeth? When one thinks of a charity one imagines something like the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, or the Hague (poppy) Fund, dedicated volunteers rattling tin boxes and collecting money from the generous. And this is true of 75% of charities. But many, like Dame Elizabeth’s Community Service Volunteers, are reliant on government handouts. They are in essence, arms of the government. An example is ASH, action on smoking and health. It takes our money to persuade our elected representatives of its views on smoking; I want our representatives to listen to our views on smoking.

There is a very interesting website called Fake Charities which identifies these and what they are up to. The way it works is that we, through our taxes paid to the government, pay money to these bogus (a better word, I think) charities, who then use a part of it to lobby the government to change our laws to what they want. They are campaigning organisations using our money. Dame Elizabeth’s CSV receives £21.6 million, 75% of its income, from the State. She probably doesn’t have any idea what this volunteering stuff is about, and of course she is against ‘cuts’. CSV’s staff costs are a bit short of £16 million a year.

As the blogger Guido says, ‘a charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend.’

Incidentally the CSV website has a survey on whether the Big Society has a future. You may find it strange that a charity should feel the need to take a survey about the policy of the elected government. Whatever you think about Cameron’s policy you might like to go and click ‘Yes’, just to annoy them.

For myself I do think the Big Society has a future. Whereas other societies, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, seem to operate a matrix of responsibility around the close or extended family, and others around a town or district, Britain has destroyed that and put a faceless state in its place. Where I differ from Mr. Cameron about his Big Society is that I think it will take a generation to implement.

Rights inside

This evening the UK House of Commons is debating prisoners’ voting rights. The position used to be that while you were in prison you couldn’t vote. Simple.

Then a prisoner took the Government to the European Court of Human Rights, saying his rights were breached in removing his vote.

The House is likely to vote that only those prisoners in for a short stay and for certain minor offences will be allowed the vote, and the UK will probably have to pay a fine for not doing as it is told.

I can’t get terribly excited about the main issue: prison as a punishment is there to deter the guilty from doing it again and to deter others from committing the crime. I simply cannot imagine someone out to commit, say, an armed robbery being stopped by a friend saying ‘Watch out: if you’re caught you won’t be able to vote in the forthcoming elections.’ Most people don’t bother to vote anyway and most prisoners won’t bother. Another purpose of prison is to rehabilitate prisoners – not that we are very good at that, and what could be a better way of making them feel part of society than letting them choose who their leaders are?

Let them vote, they’re probably no less capable of understanding the issues than other people.

And the debate misses the important point: Britain and its people had no say in this. We are having to obey a law imposed by unelected judges from other countries. This is the first contentious edict from the human rights act I can remember even going before Parliament and even now the Government doesn’t promise to follow Parliament’s decision. What we need to do, all of us, is to subscribe to the principles of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights but have laws in Britain approved by the British Parliament, and those in Germany approved by the German one.

But they’re not even discussing that.

The US and us

The Daily Telegraph reports that British nuclear secrets have been used without our consent as a bargaining chip to enable President Obama to sign an arms limitation deal with Russia.

I have said it before and will say it again: Obama is not on our side and we should not be on his.

Ship of Fools

A strange tale to tell. In 1983 the people of West Belfast, which is part of the United Kingdom but scarcely part of the real world, elected as their MP one Gerard Adams, a terrorist.

Adams did not take up his seat in Parliament, not believing that West Belfast was subject to Her Majesty the Queen but, hypocritically, accepted an office and staff allowances.

Now he has decided to leave, indeed quit the country, and try for election in the Irish Republic later this year. I don’t suppose it matters very much to his constituents, who haven’t been represented in Parliament anyway.

But there is a problem. The only way an MP may resign is by taking an office for profit under the Crown, which of course Mr Adams does not want. He sent a notice of resignation to the Speaker of the House of Commons and thought that was that. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that he has been appointed to such an office, the Prime Minister has announced it in Parliament and Mr Adams says he has accepted no such thing.

Now, I am all for a bit if intrigue, a bit of political point scoring, and have no truck with Mr Adams who, as I say, is or was a terrorist, but all this is daft. It is like children bringing some abstruse rule of their sport to catch out someone with less detailed knowledge. It makes Britain look daft.

Here is what I propose:

- if you don’t take up your seat in Westminster within a certain time (and taking up your seat involves the oath of loyalty to the Queen) you can’t have an office or expenses and a by-election must be held so the constituents can confirm they don’t want to be represented at all.

- If you want to leave office just write a letter and there will be a by-election.

Many in the House of Commons – and this seems to include the Prime Minister - are cackling with delight at this confusion. They shouldn’t be. It makes us all look like fools.

How the other half live

The Opposition finance spokesman, or Shadow Chancellor, Alan Johnson, has resigned. Half the media seems to think it is because he was having an affair with a civil servant, whilst the other half think it is because his wife is having an affair with his bodyguard. Perhaps both are true.

So, where was the bodyguard when....no, let's not go there.

Mr Johnson is 60, and, one would have thought, extremely busy. He does not appear to have resigned out of shame about his marriage, but because he found it difficult worrying about the press. I don't really know whether these people should be setting an example to the nation or not. I rather think that sort of thing went out of the window some years ago, except when talking about Silvio Berlusconi.

Anyway, details of Mr Johnson's private life have been leaked to one of the Sunday papers by an assistant to Ed Balls, Mr Johnson's replacement. Happy days.

A sop to democracy

In what the Government says is a move to bring the legislature closer to the people, there are to be petitions on a special website. The petition with the greatest number of votes will be drafted into a bill and put before parliament, and any petition with a certain number of signatures (thought to be 1 million) will be guaranteed parliamentary time for a debate.

This can of course go wrong for both sides. For us the voters, the government just needs one of its stooges to petition ‘We the people are greatly supportive of motherhood and apple pie’ for the bill drafting embarrassment to be got out of the way. And we need only have 36 different petitions on Europe for the vote to be divided.

Where it can misfire for the government is that the legislature is indeed out of step with the electorate. Continually polls suggest that most people in Britain would like to leave the European Union and bring back capital punishment, but you wouldn’t even get a small minority in parliament supporting such measures.

Still, we must play along. If Open Europe, or some similar organisation draws up a petition on at least repatriating powers from Europe I shall support it. Without much hope though. I smell a little bit of a rat here.

Politicians: the self-importance index

What do we think of our politicians? How bad? Hmm, as bad as that, eh?

Of coure some politicians are clearly mad, some are living in the 1950s or '60s but for the rest we should strive towards a system of evaluation. 'By their fruits ye shall know them' ran the Sermon on the Mount but I'm not sure it referred to politicians, most of whom achieve so little that there are no..er..fruits.

One way I favour is to make a measurement of a politician's perceived sense of his own importance relative to his actual importance. It is in the nature of politicians that this ratio should be high, but surely no one has a higher self-importance index than John 'Vince' Cable.

Cable is all over today's papers saying tht if he is pushed too far he could resign and bring the Government down. I have two problems with this: first, it is far from clear that his resignation would bring the Government down; his colleagues are getting too much pleasure from their ministerial cars and salaries to want to hand it all in on account of some diva's complaint from the Business Department.

Second, it is not clear to whom the threat is directed: if he were to cause an immediate election his party, the Liberal Democrats would be annihilated.

'Let your light so shine before men' says the Sermon, 'that they may see your good works'. But it also says that it's the meek that's going to inherit the earth.

The importance of students

In Rome they besieged the parliament. So many police were put on the streets that it was almost impossible to go round the central area, even on foot.

In England the Prince of Wales and Mrs Prince of Wales (why isn’t she the Princess of Wales?) are besieged in their car and Mrs PoW is said to have been poked with a stick. A protester has had emergency brain surgery after allegedly being hit over the head with a truncheon and another says he was knocked out of his wheelchair.

The other day I was reading a good article by Ben Brogan. He made the point that the Budget analysis contained a summary of how it would affect rich and poor, but not of how it would affect old against young. ‘..the young are getting clobbered while the old escape with their pensions and mortgage-free houses intact.’.. not to mention winter fuel allowance and free TV licences.

So how have successive governments got away with this? One answer may lie in a survey quoted in Political Betting. A lot of the students’ ire is directed at the Liberal Democrats, who said they would not allow any increase in tuition fees. Of course, just like Conservative supporters on Europe, electoral change and much else, that idea went out of the window as soon as the coalition saw the inside of Downing Street. But had the students really supported the Lib Dems?

The statistics show turnout among 18-24 year old women was 39%; amongst 18-24 year old men 50%.

The turnout of women 55+ was 73% and of men 55+ 76%.

If the young don’t vote, the politicians probably think they don’t matter; and voting, let’s face it, is probably more effective than poking a grandmother with a stick.

UK University Tuition fees explained

This from Nick Robinson, political editor of the BBC:

'The minister who introduced student tuition fees now says a graduate tax may be better even though he once described the idea as unworkable...

he's opposing the man who pledged to oppose any increase in fees who now insists it's the right thing to do...

... who's in coalition with a man who wrote a manifesto promising that his party would scrap fees but is now planning to double them.'

Hope that's clear.

Benefits for all?

Quite a sensible suggestion from lapdancing bar owner Peter Stringfellow about the British winter fuel allowance. He said from his home in Majorca (yes, they are quite happy to send it to pensioners living in Majorca) that he had been trying to give it back without success. He is, of course, a multi-millionaire and doesn’t need it, but they send it to multi-millionaires as well.

The answer, says Stringfellow, is to get you to tick a box saying if you want it. Simple.

Let’s now hear from Mr Duncan Smith.

Your money in their hands (No.361)

It isn't a new phenomenon; however tough a politician might talk when he is out of office, give him power and he becomes the usual, statist, big government type. They can't resist it.

With Mr Cameron it seems the change has been swifter than with most. He enjoys power and whilst talking about cutting expenditure, can't resist lavishing a little moolah on a pet project.

Cameron's latest idea is to spend several million pounds of the taxpayers' money creating a happiness index. The way to judge this is to guess what will happen to the calculations if they come out wrong, if Mr Cameron's corporatist, eurobureaucracy-friendly, social democracy sucking mish-mash of a government in fact makes us more unhappy (that's certainly the effect it is having on me). The index will quietly disappear.

More likely the creators of the happiness index will decide what is likely to happen and design the index to give a positive result, just as Gordon Brown defined child poverty in terms of it being something he could cure with a simple, planned tax reduction.

They're all the same.